MGMT's electric thrill

By Craig Mathieson

12 July 2018 — 11:45pm

It’s little more than a day since the American alternative rock band MGMT finished their tour of America’s west coast, and while he’s now relaxing in his home back on Rockaway Beach in New York City, vocalist and guitarist Andrew VanWyngarden is still thinking about what happened to him and fellow frontman and songwriter Ben Goldwasser following the gig at Salt Lake City’s Union Event Centre.

“After the show we talked to these high school kids and there were 12 of them, a big group of friends, and they had this sparkle in their eyes, like a natural version of having taken magic mushrooms, and they were inspired by our show,” VanWyngarden says. “Some of them had apparently been listening to us since they were eight-years-old. We’re still connecting with young people and that feels good.

MGMT's Ben Goldwasser (left) and Andrew VanWyngarden return to Australia on the back of fourth album Little Dark Age. Credit:Sony

“Ben’s from a tiny town in upstate New York and I grew up in Memphis, it’s not tiny but I wasn’t exposed to that much obscure culture,” he adds, “so when we’re making music we’re imagining connecting with those kids in high school who feel like they’re outcasts on the edge of the world. And that’s what’s happening.”

For VanWyngarden and Goldwasser, there has been moments of self-doubt these last few years as they set to work on what would become their fourth studio album, February’s Little Dark Age. Could a duo who exemplified optimistic youthful insouciance with their breakthrough 2008 singles Time to Pretend and Electric Feel, have a similar impact on fans while in their mid-30s?

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“Going out to say hi to people and take photos and talk to them made me feel so good on this last tour. Our music is still relevant to kids in college or even high school, as well our original fans who’ve followed us from the start,” VanWyngarden says. “I read an interview with Andre 3000 where he said you stay the age you became successful at. For him it was 17, but for us it’s 24. Thankfully we’ve lost some of the lesser traits of that age – we don’t think we know everything anymore.”

A decade after they announced themselves, serving as the populist face for a psychedelic-rock revival that replaced the new rock’s return to ground zero guitars, MGMT find themselves returning to their early highs. Little Dark Age is eclectic and nimble, taking in bittersweet 1970s pop (When You Die) and vintage electronic grooves (One Thing Left to Try), and it’s struck a chord with audiences.

“The way things happen with our band is that there’s been all these different ups and downs,” VanWyngarden says. “For a while, at the start of our career with the first album, we were struggling to become a real band. We got signed straight from college when we’d written a few songs and we hadn’t done all that much touring. When we had the most attention on us – and the most hype – we were still figuring so many things out.”

It’s easy to forget now how MGMT’s 2007 debut album Oracular Spectacular was met with a storm of ecstatic approval, which was soon followed by a savage backlash. “I wish people didn’t have to prove they’re above our album,” Goldwasser told me in 2011, when the duo were touring their second album, Congratulations, a reactive left of centre set. But whatever came their way MGMT stuck together and kept working.

“It’s insane that we even survived as a band. We were pretty naive and had no idea what to expect when we signed to Columbia,” VanWyngarden says. “We signed a deal from another music era – before YouTube and Spotify. It’s a different world now and somehow we made it. I’m grateful for that.”

VanWyngarden made some changes in his own life. Having grown up in laidback Memphis, where his father has long been the editor of an alternative weekly magazine with the music collection to match, he escaped a succession of “tiny New York apartments” for the Rockaway Beach house that puts him on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and lets him further his love of surfing, which he picked up in Byron Bay on a previous Australian tour.

His relationship with Goldwasser has also evolved. Journalists were sometimes nonplussed when interviews with the pair began with each musician finding out what the other had been up to recently. But if that suggested the pair, who bonded over music as students at Wesleyan University, enjoyed separate lives they’ve managed to maintain a connection when it comes to making music together.

“I’ve realised as time has passed that one of the themes of Little Dark Age is questioning whether that creative spark is still there between Ben and me,” VanWyngarden says. “There are certain songs that we didn’t know what they’re about when we wrote them, but now I see that they’re about the journey Ben and I have been on as friends and artists who share a creative vision.”

Franz Ferdinand are playing shows in Melbourne and Sydney with MGMTCredit:Frontier

Some of the very first songs that VanWyngarden and Goldwasser wrote together went on to come radio playlist and party staples, but they’ve never been able to fully explain their songwriting connection. It’s as if the more they’ve written, the less they’re able to articulate what is occurring.

“It’s this mysterious, alchemical thing. We never had writer’s block, but we’ve had years we couldn’t find any flow. The one thing that has worked for us is persistence,” VanWyngarden says. “On this album we worked for a long time before the first song came together. We had to chip away at this wall until we had a breakthrough.”

As opposed to being young and thinking you’ll take a sledgehammer to it? VanWyngarden laughs. “When you’re young you don’t even know there’s a wall there.”

MGMT play at Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay on Sunday, July 22; Festival Hall in Melbourne with Franz Ferdinand on Tuesday, July 24; and the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney with Franz Ferdinand on Wednesday, July 25.